Tim Tebow and the Mojo

One of the things that I like best about sports is that whole category of things that happen that just can't be explained rationally.  I call it "the mojo": the way certain teams have the upper hand over other teams, the way you sometimes know when a 3-point shot is going in before it even leaves the hands of the shooter, the way your team can be up 10 points in the second half, but you feel defeated as if the game is already lost (and more often than not, when you have this feeling, your team does go ahead and lose).  Sure, all of those things can be explained, or at least assigned meaning: mental edge, good form, momentum, etc.  But I like to think there's something magical about life in general, and that one place where it makes itself be known, let's itself be seen, is in sports.

Anyone who has even a passing interest in the NFL knows who Tim Tebow is.  Nominally, he's the current starting quarterback of the Denver Broncos, but that's not what he's famous for.  He's also perhaps the league's most prominent devout Christian, but again, that's not what's giving him his buzz.  He's famous for not being that good of a quarterback in any area except for the win column, where he's 7-1 since he was made the quarterback by default, basically because the others on the team sucked worse than he does.  Consider that he went all of last  year and the first part of this year as no better than the backup.  Why?  Because he has weird mechanics, and is not particularly accurate: two usually lock-tight reasons for not playing a backup quarterback.

But he's not famous just for being a bad, yet winning, quarterback.  He's famous for often playing horribly (like the 2nd or 3rd stringer that he is, talent-wise), then pulling it together and almost literally willing his team to victory, week after week.  He'll miss receivers all day long, but when it matters, he'll string 3 or 4 completions together to put his team in position to win.  When he's running the ball (which he does a lot), he'll lower his shoulder and attempt to run over his potential tackler as opposed to sliding to avoid him.  In those closing minutes and seconds of a game that Denver's trying to win, he becomes the most difficult human being on the planet to bring down, or deflect a pass from.  He has the mojo.

So, what gives him his mojo?

Is it confidence?  Well, that's probably the most important component.  To lead other men, you have to appear confident that you have the ability to actually lead- and he does.  But that doesn't explain the late-game heroics.

Is it selflessness?  That certainly doesn't hurt.  He's not a slider, he doesn't duck hits, and he clearly gives every ounce of effort, unlike many many players (I'm looking at you...3/4 of all wide receivers in the league).

Is it humility in the face of stardom?  Probably has little to do with it, but he's got that in spades.  You'll never hear him take credit for team wins, in fact it's the opposite.  "My team makes me better, they help me improve," he'll say.

Some overzealous Christians even imply that his strong faith has given him his mojo.  Clearly that's nonsense, but since we can't account for it any other way, I'm just as comfortable with that crackpot theory as with any other.

Also, it must be said, especially with such a dominant defense, that Tebow is not the sole reason why Denver is winning so often since he started playing, though clearly they're connected.  Whatever the mojo is, it has seeped into every element of the team, and has worked it's mysterious power on other teams.  Fluke fumbles, missed kicks, inexplicable mistakes: they're all aiding Denver's success ever since Tebow started playing.  By now, Tebow's in the heads of other teams, making them look over their shoulders as the game nears its end, which is the hallmark trait of the mojo.

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So why do I care enough to write about it?  I love the Tebow mojo.  I don't necessarily love Tim Tebow, though I admit to being confused about all the people who really seem to hate him.  And it does help that by all accounts, he's a very good person who wants nothing more than to be a good teammate and help his team win, both of which he's doing a bang-up job of.

I love the Tebow mojo because it's one of those era/events in sports that needs to be recognized while it's in progress, because once it's gone, it's gone forever.  It won't last forever, or even probably that long.  For all of Tebow's mojo and heart, defenses will figure him out, opposing offenses will find the flaws in the Denver D and do the kind of damage that can't be remedied without a whole game's worth of Tebow magic.  When that happens, will he be up to the challenge?  Probably not, but then again, the Tebow mojo was nowhere in the neighborhood of the probable prior to it's inception, and now look where we are.

Admittedly, it's a minor little era/event, too.  Jordan's (first) retirement, Nadal beating Federer, the Red Sox beating the Yankees in the ALCS; those are all major sea-change endings of eras, and beginnings of new ones.  This is just the magic of one player's effect on a team; a team which probably won't make it out of the first round of the NFL playoffs, but then, it's not about where it ends, it's about what happens week to week.  Will the Tebow magic continue?  Every week, the odds are it will end.  So far, the odds haven't amounted to a damn thing; the mojo bowls the odds right over.

Lots of people, my boyfriend included, actively root against Tebow and the Broncos, as if he, and they, are some fraud just begging to be exposed.  What's fraudulent about the mojo, the fact that it's not logical?  Why would we dislike him, because he's not a prototypical NFL quarterback who scored well in the combine?  Why would I want it to end?  Why would I root for the death of this mojo?  Can you imagine how boring sports would be if everything was predictable and went according to plan?  To me, the mojo: the magical, the unexplainable- is the best part of sports.  But one day, maybe next week, maybe in January, the mojo will fade, and we'll be looking for the next place for it to pop up, and transfix those of us that truly love sports.

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Maybe in three years, when Tebow is some other team's backup quarterback and tight end, the announcers will occasionally remind us of that special time in the 2011 season, when the otherwise listless Broncos took flight with him at the helm.  Then again, maybe he'll be a starting quarterback in 3 years, but he's just as likely to be somewhere in Southeast Asia, helping build a clinic in some rural village.

Will you still be undefeated, Green Bay?  Will we care?  I have nothing against Green Bay, but there's nothing particularly magical about their superior players and schemes predictably running roughshod over each week's scheduled victim.

We have all of January to worry about that.  But in the meantime, go look at Tebow's completion percentage, and his first-half numbers.  Notice how subpar he is statistically, then remind yourself that sometimes statistics don't mean a damn thing.